Copyright © 2018 Authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7 (3.7) (2018) 153-155 International Journal of Engineering & Technology Website: www.sciencepubco.com/index.php/IJET Research paper Decision Support Tools for Selecting Organisational Improvement Initiatives: a Review Musli Mohammad 1 , Ligesh Manni Vattiyan 1 , and Mohd Shahir Yahya 2 1 Industrial System Engineering Research Group, Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, 86400 Parit Raja, Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia. 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Centre for Diploma Studies, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Kampus Pagoh, KM 1, Jalan Panchor, 84600 Muar, Johor, Malaysia. *Corresponding author E-mail: mmusli@uthm.edu.my Abstract Decision support tools are used in many organisations to support organisational decision making activities. However, very limited studies have been found focussing on the decision support tools for selecting organisational improvement initiatives. Improvement initiatives are approaches, management systems, tools and/or techniques that can be used for managing and improving organisations, such as Lean, ISO9001 and Improvement Team. Four existing decision support tools were reviewed and compared. All four decision support tools consist of decision matrix, rating and ranking to assist in selecting appropriate improvement initiative. Finally, several potential future studies have been proposed. Keywords: Decision support tool, Selection of organisational improvement initiatives, Total Quality Management, Business Excellence 1. Introduction To remain relevant in current uncertain and complex environment, organisations need to improve their performance in order to meet the purpose of their existence, and to satisfy and exceed the expec- tations of customers, employees, shareholders, supply chain part- ners, community and other stakeholders. In order to improve or- ganisational performance, many organisations need guidance on how to select appropriate improvement initiatives. ‘Improvement initiatives’ refers herein to approaches, management systems, tools and/or techniques that can be used for managing improving organisation and include, for example: Six Sigma, Lean, ISO9001, Business Continuity Management, and Environmental Manage- ment System [1-3]. Unfortunately, numerous organisations are facing problems in selecting appropriate improvement initiatives due to more than one thousand improvement initiatives currently available in the market. Even more challenging is that the number of improvement initiatives increases every year, which makes it even harder to select the most appropriate initiative [4-6]. The adoption of initiatives requires time, resources, financial and knowledge. To avoid unnecessary waste and frustration, it would be better for people to select the appropriate improvement initia- tive that will fit with organisation’s context and provide value to the organisation [1][7]. To address this issue, it is important to conduct further studies on the decision support tools for selecting appropriate organisational improvement initiatives. 2. Review of the Existing Decision Support Tools for Selecting Organisational Im- provement Initiatives Table 1 summarises four existing decision support tools for select- ing organisational improvement initiatives, which includes Thawesaengskulthai (2007) [7], Wieleman (2011) [8], Mohammad (2012) [1], and Hussein (2014) [9]. Decision support tools devel- oped by Thawesaengskulthai (2007) [7], Wieleman (2011) [8], and Mohammad (2012) [1] were part of the steps in overall guid- ance model for selecting organisational improvement initiatives and used Microsoft Excel. In contrast, Hussein (2014) [9] devel- oped a web based decision support tool using Dreamweaver and PHP software.